A kick-off demonstration, entitled “Popular Protest Against Austerity and the Petro Economy,” was held last Saturday in Montreal, and drew participants ranging from 5,000 to 12,000, depending on who was doing the counting.

In the wake of the financial crisis, political elites have become more concerned about their own survival than about the purpose of politics, and the gap between what they say and what they do, between speech and meaning, becomes wider all the time.

There is another obvious and plausible explanation for the flat carbon emissions, namely, that the global economy did not grow by the stated percentage, that it may have grown only a fraction of that amount or not at all.